A TV crew was arrested and had their equipment destroyed while filming a documentary about the Qatar World Cup

Christian Hartmann/Reuters A television crew was arrested, interrogated and had its equipment deleted and destroyed by Qatari authorities while filming a documentary about the 2022 World Cup.

A reporter, cameraman, camera assistant and driver were denied permission to leave the Gulf state for five days after capturing footage of labour camps there for a program called "The Selling of Football: Sepp Blatter and the Power of Fifa."

In an incident that raised questions about mega-wealthy Qatar's attitude to scrutiny of the death and abuse of migrant workers building the infrastructure for it to stage the World Cup, the crew from Germany's biggest television network was only allowed to return home following intense lobbying by their own country's ambassador.

ARD journalist Florian Bauer and his team were investigating the squalid living and employment conditions of construction workers a year on from the Qatari government's pledge to tackle what has been denounced by human rights organisations as modern-day slavery.

Bauer admitted travelling to Doha without permission to film after his requests to do so were either ignored or denied by several government agencies, as well as being rejected by World Cup organisers.

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The sports politics specialist, who had been granted the required permit on each of his previous visits to the country, questioned whether the authorities and Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy were cracking down on those trying to hold the regime to account.

"I can only assume that this time they thought, 'We don't want to have the same story in terms of labour camp-visits'," Bauer told Telegraph Sport.

"After five-and-a-half weeks of contacting the National Human Rights Committee, the embassy of Qatar in Germany, and so on and so forth, asking all of them for the shooting permit, we actually acknowledged they don't want to give us one."

Bauer and his team were arrested on March 27, a day after arriving in Qatar, and were held for 14 hours before being released at 4 a.m. the following morning.

Admitting he was "scared", Bauer said: "There were interrogations by people from the intelligence service who said if I didn't co-operate with them, it would work badly for me."

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The crew was physically unharmed, which could not be said for its equipment.

A Qatar 2022 source denied it was trying to stifle reporting of working conditions in the country, which Bauer admitted were of a high standard when it came to projects the Supreme Committee oversaw.

The source said it rejected his filming request because it had already granted one to a sports reporter from the same network, and also said it had not wanted to be the sole commentator on labour camps not under its direct jurisdiction.

The Telegraph was awaiting a response on Tuesday from a government spokesman on why the NHRC, Ministry of Labour, Ministry of Interior and representatives for the Emir himself did not grant Bauer permission to film.

Qatar's minister of labour and social affairs admitted on Monday that the country's failure to ensure decent accommodation for its bulging migrant workforce was a "mistake" he was working to fix.

Representatives of British broadcasters, who did not want to be named, have admitted deliberately omitting to tell the Qatari authorities if they plan to film labour camps when they travel there amid fears their application would be rejected.

Bauer said he was particularly "outraged" by his own snub because his previous reports about the country had not been unbalanced.

He added: "They knew that I'm not biased. Nevertheless, they weren't giving me an invitation letter and that makes me think about, 'Hey, what's the Supreme Committee thinking about this? Why are they not more open?'"